Shame

   I've been meaning to catch up with Shame for the better part of 6 months and I must say that I wish I had seen it when I listed my favorite movies of 2011, because it would have certainly bumped one out of the top ten.  This movie was spectacular, tragic and heartbreaking.  Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan - wow.  Steve McQueen (no, not the Steve McQueen) directs Fassbender as Brandon, a man with flaws as deep as any you will ever see on screen.  He is addicted to sexual pleasure and will do anything to reach his goal of satisfaction.  He is intensely self-destructive in his endeavor and it affects his life profoundly.  We see girls come and go, some he pays for, some he doesn't.  He is like a serial killer looking for his next kill or a heroin addict trying to cop his next bag.  Once the act is complete, it leaves him feeling empty and even more depressed than ever and all that he can think of is how to get his next fix.  We see Brandon quite literally charm the pants off of women but we also see the dark side of his pursuit.  His good looks allow him to lock eyes with women for uncomfortably long periods of time, and during these takes, McQueen doesn't cut away - he allows us to see Brandon's charming smile turn into a monstrous stare.  McQueen loves to keep his camera static and allow us to watch a scene in its entirety.  He first directed Fassbender in the 2008 film Hunger, about IRA soldiers banding together in a hunger strike to fight for better conditions in British prisons in the early 1980's.  In that film, which you must see -- it is streaming on Netflix -- there is an 18 and a half minute conversation scene between Fassbender and a Catholic priest.  McQueen sits the camera a few feet from the table, and with a side view, allows us to listen to the whole dialogue from start to finish while the two men smoke an endless amount of cigarettes.  It is something to see.
   In his latest film, McQueen has several extended, single-cut scenes, although none of which rival the one in Hunger.  During one that stands out, Brandon is on a date with a girl from work who he actually might have feelings for, and it is during this scene where we get a glimpse of Brandon as awkward and uneasy.  He doesn't know how to talk to women without trying to get them into bed.  This is the only woman who causes us to see Brandon as something other than a confident predator.
   Mulligan plays Brandon's sister, Sissy, who moves in with Brandon, claiming she has nowhere else to go.  I believe her.  Her personality is all over the place.  She sings in a nightclub and, like her big brother, is quick to get into bed with a man.  Brandon hates having her in his space because she "is a weight on him" and prevents him from satisfying his urges as he would like to.  He fights with her regularly.  McQueen doesn't tell us exactly what happened in their past that caused them to be the way they are, but does allude to some tragic event that brought about great pain: "We are not bad people, we just come from a bad place."
   Sexual addiction has been under skeptical review as of late but this film makes a pretty good case that it is a real disease - one that causes great pain and suffering to those afflicted.  Brandon does not possess the ability to care for people.  His relationship with his sister is cold and distant (and strangely incestuous).  Sissy tells her brother that it is his responsibility to care for her since she has nowhere else to turn.  He resists.
  Towards the end of the film, Brandon shows signs that he truly does care about his sister, but still we get the sense that his disease will never leave his side.
  Shame is rated NC-17 for explicit male and female full-frontal nudity.  It is not, however, sexy at all.  Rather, you will find it grotesque and tragic, like you would a film about someone deeply addicted to drugs or murder.

The Conspirator

  Robert Redford directed this 2011 historical drama about Mary Surratt's involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.  If nothing else can be said about the film, its cast is certainly impressive: James McAvoy, Tom Wilkinson, Robin Wright, Justin Long, Evan Rachel Wood, Kevin Kline and many others.  My two favorites were both big players in the HBO series The Wire - Roland Pryzbylewski and Frank Sobotka.
  The Conspirator was good enough to watch at home, but would have been even better to show to a class full of high school students, as it plays just like a documentary.

A Better Life

A Better Life stars Demian Bichir as Carlos, a hard-working Mexican single father who is finding it increasingly difficult to raise his 14 year old son Luis in low-rent Los Angeles.  He makes what little money they do have by doing landscaping jobs around the city.  Each day, he gets in his boss’ pickup truck and goes to an expensive home and trims hedges, climbs palm trees and cuts grass.  When his boss tries to convince him to buy the pickup truck off of him so he could begin working for himself, Carlos tells him that he doesn’t have any money to purchase the vehicle and, even if he did, he would lose everything if he were to get pulled over by the police since he doesn’t have a driver’s license or proper paperwork to be in the United States. 

            Luis is at that point in a teenager’s life where he is battling with difficult decisions on a daily basis: Do I join a gang? Do I drop out of school? Do I chase the dream of making easy money on the streets rather than earning an education and a legitimate career?  Despite some brutally terrible acting by the young people who play his friends, Jose Julian does a fantastic job in the role as Luis.  As a teacher, I see first-hand what teenagers can be like at their worst – and Luis is, for most of the film, pretty easy to dislike.  He is ungrateful, apathetic and disrespectful.  Carlos tries to instill in him some work ethic and respect, but it falls on deaf ears.  Luis seems destined to be another drop-out in the long line of young people who feel that school is an unnecessary waste of their time. 

            I thought about how difficult it must be to get quality acting from teenagers for a smaller film like this one and am willing to give a pass to the overall quality of the movie since Julian does such fine work.  If you go with more famous faces, then you lose something in the authenticity of the story and if you go with unknown people who may not even be actors, then you run the risk of getting poor performances, which was the case here.  It can’t be easy casting a movie like this.

            Carlos ends up getting a loan from his sister to buy the truck from his boss.  He takes a few extra dollars and buys something nice for Luis, which goes unappreciated.  Carlos talks to Luis about how having a truck will change everything for them – how it will allow them to develop their landscaping business into something truly great, thus providing them with the opportunity to move out of their neighborhood and get Luis into a really good school.  This seems to sink in to Luis, but only for a moment.  A pickup truck (and the necessary tools to run a landscaping business) is the key to a Mexican immigrant’s true independence in this unforgiving country.  Carlos now is in possession of it all – but not for long. 

            After Carlos loses the truck, the film’s plot turns into a bit of a revenge/mystery/thriller, which I found riveting – especially since the stakes are so dramatically high.  We finally get to see if Luis is going to grow up enough to try and rebuild his relationship with his father and it’s at this point where the movie really hits home.  Many great scenes between father and son fill out the final 30 minutes.  One particularly poignant exchange between Carlos and Luis takes place, symbolically, in a doorway. 
            Demian Bichir earned a well-deserved Oscar nomination for his leading role and I would have loved to see him win it.  Oldman's performance was too muted, Pitt's was unspectacular, and Dujardin's was a joke.  George Clooney was really good in The Descendants, but still not as good as Bichir was here.  

            A Better Life is an amazing film that will probably make you ruminate on how the American government manages immigration policy.  For me, it offered a very personal look into how the pursuit of the American dream can oftentimes be a difficult and tragic journey.  But mostly, I loved this film because it tells a story of the undying devotion a father has for his troubled son.  

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

     Not much to say about this movie, other than that it is pretty entertaining.  The plot is outrageous, the effects are amazing and the overall tone is light and silly, all of which add to the film's fun.  Tom Cruise is very comfortable poking fun at himself, which is even easier to do when Simon Pegg is his new sidekick.  Jeremy Renner is pretty great in his role and, from what I hear, is the heir-apparent to the franchise.  If that is true, I look forward to seeing him take the baton.
    The whole Dubai sequence is mind blowing, but I was most impressed by the screen illusion in the Kremlin - very unique.

Into The Abyss

   

Werner Herzog's latest doc dives deep - and I mean deep - into the depths of death row.  Into The Abyss is a fascinating look at capital punishment from all angles.  I didn't love it, however.

The Skin I Live In

   This was my first look into the world of Pedro Almodovar and I must say that I was extremely impressed.  I saw this film a month ago, so I won't write too much about it other than that I liked it quite a bit and was not ready for the twist at the end.  Almodovar has a style all his own, with futuristic, clean-looking photography that makes this film look like a modern painting.  In addition to looking great, this film really sinks deep into questions of self identity, gender and what it means to be beautiful. (not to mention the horrific crimes that take place)  I look forward to seeing some of his other films.

Young Adult

  From quirky writer Diablo Cody comes this 2011 character study about a beautiful 37-year old former prom queen who is having monumental struggles with finding contentment in her life.  Cody's most famous work has been the Michael Cera, Ellen Page hit Juno from 2007 - it's hard to believe it was that long ago.  I liked Juno quite a bit, but I wonder if I went back and watched it again if I would be able to even stomach the annoying Codyisms.  I probably would, simply because Cera, Page and Jason Bateman are really, really likeable.  In Young Adult, Charlize Theron is purposefully unlikeable, which makes it very hard to swallow Cody's style of writing.  She plays Mavis, a (ghost) writer of young adult books who hails from a very small Minnesota town called Mercury, whose natives are normal, hard-working Americans who get excited when a new Applebee's opens near the mall.  Due to the wildly successful series of books she has penned, she lives a lavish lifestyle in Minneapolis, which might as well be Paris in the eyes of the common Mercurian, but she is devastatingly dissatisfied with her life and yearns to reconnect with her one true love from high school, Buddy Slade (played by Patrick Wilson).  Buddy, however, is quite happily married with a newborn baby, a nice house, and a lovely new SUV.
  When Mavis travels to Mercury and meets up with Buddy, she has plans to steal him away from his wife and baby.  Along the way, she is approached at a bar by Matt (played with vastly overrated effectiveness by Patton Oswalt), a crippled former high school classmate who keeps the books at the local sports bar.  Oswalt is good at times, but mostly I could tell that he was acting, which is never a sign of a truly good performance.  Matt and Mavis begin a somewhat-believable friendship based on them both being social outcasts - Matt back in high school when he was nearly beaten to death by jocks, Mavis who peaked in high school and has been on a perpetual down-slide ever since.  They drink a lot of whiskey and talk about their problems.  Matt tries to convince Mavis that she should not try to get Buddy back, but she does not want to hear it.  Things, of course, turn ugly with Buddy when Mavis' persistence turns into spiteful, angry jealousy.
   I did not care for this movie at all and neither did my girlfriend.  Theron's performance was hammy enough to consistently remove me from the story.  Her charade was annoying.  Cody wrote this character as being artificial for the first 95% of the film, and by the time the final ten minutes (which I hated) arrived, it was too late to save it for me.  I know that the whole point of Mavis was to be a masquerade, but Theron just didn't sell it for me.  This being a character study, the plot is sort of secondary, and since I didn't find anything about the character that I could latch on to or sympathize with, I was never on board at all. 
  From director Jason Reitman, who made Juno as well as one of my favorite films of 2009 Up In The Air, this movie was a big disappointment for me.  I heard so many good things about the actors' performances and the accessibility of the story, but I just didn't find anything compelling about it.  Maybe if Cody actually gave Mavis more legitimate reasons to be unhappy (she only provides one truly traumatic moment in her past), I could have bought into it more.  Mavis has a great life and needs to grow up and appreciate life for what it is, not for what it could have been.  That is not a movie, it is a 22-minute sitcom.  Diablo Cody relies so heavily on being clever and hip with her writing, but she may need the assistance of young talent like Cera and Page in order to sell her quirkiness.